Posts Tagged ‘Inc.’

For those of you wondering, it is not okay to push a union official down the stairs of your jobsite trailer, which is precisely what a superintendent working for an Arizona building contractor did. In the matter of Norquay Construction, Inc., the National Labor Relations Board held that such an assault interfered with the protection afforded to unions under the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), which protection covers action taken in furtherance of enforcing or protecting area labor rights. As a result of such interference, the National Labor Relations Board held the contractor liable to the assaulted union agent for lost pay and medical expenses resulting from the superintendent’s assault.

This article is authored by attorney Shannon O. Young and is intended for educational purposes and to give you general information and a general understanding of the law only, not to provide specific legal advice. Any particular questions should be directed to your legal counsel or, if you do not have one, please feel free to contact us.

Mistakes happen to the best of us, for example, occasionally things slip through the cracks at companies when someone goes on vacation or HR gets swamped with new hires. Yet when it comes to dealing with sexual harassment complaints employers need to be ever vigilant. If they aren’t, the consequences of their mistakes may haunt them.

For instance, in the case of EEOC v. Farmer’s Pride, Inc., a Pennsylvania poultry processing plant came under the investigation of the EEOC after one of its male workers alleged that he was sexually harassed by his female supervisor while working in the deboning (no pun intended) department at the company’s Fredericksburg facility and his supervisor reached down his pants and touched his genitals while he was working. The worker alleged that the female supervisor subjected several other male and female co-workers to similar harassment and that two male supervisors also acted inappropriately toward female employees.

As part of its investigation, the EEOC asked for the company to produce facility-wide information regarding whether other workers had complained of sexual harassment. Although the company produced some information in response to an EEOC subpoena, it failed to fully comply. The company contended that the EEOC’s investigation of the worker’s charge should be limited to the supervisors he named and the breast deboning department. The EEOC then sued the company in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, seeking an order to show cause why its subpoena should not be enforced.

Thereafter, the court agreed ordered the company to comply with the subpoena finding that the EEOC has broad investigative authority and that the EEOC had established: (1) a legitimate purpose; (2) relevancy; (3) that the information was not already in its possession; and (4) the subpoena was not “unreasonably broad or burdensome.” Indeed, the court found that sexual harassment complaints from elsewhere in the facility would provide context in determining whether the company’s response to sexual harassment complaints by its employees was adequate. In other words, harassment complaints by employees elsewhere in the company’s facility would be relevant to whether the company allowed a sexually hostile environment to exist in its workplace.

Although whether the company engaged in any wrongdoing remains to be determined, the ruling on the EEOC’s right to subpoena documents regarding sexual harassment complaints on a facility-wide basis should serve as a stark reminder to employers that they need to take sexual harassment complaints seriously and have the proper policies in place for addressing such complaints.

The attorneys are Harmon & Davies are here to assist employers with all their Labor and Employment Law needs, including the handling of sexual harassment complaints and the crafting of sexual harassment policies, and protocol for dealing with sexual harassment complaints and investigations.

This article is authored by attorney Shannon O. Young and is intended for educational purposes and to give you general information and a general understanding of the law only, not to provide specific legal advice. Any particular questions should be directed to your legal counsel or, if you do not have one, please feel free to contact us.

National homebuilder, D.R. Horton, Inc. is embroiled in a legal battle with the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) over whether a provision in its employment contracts requiring its employees to engage in a mandatory arbitration agreement that waived the employees’ rights to participate in class or collective actions violated the employees federally protected right to engage in “concerted activity” for their mutual aid and protection.

The dispute arose when one of the homebuilder’s superintendents filed a charge with the NLRB alleging that he and other employees were prevented from pursuing claims that they were misclassified as exempt workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act by virtue of the homebuilder’s allegedly illegal dispute resolution procedure that blocked employees from pursuing class or colletive actions in court or in arbitration. The NLRB sustained the charge and the case was appealed all the up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The case was argued before the Fifth Circuit earlier this month. The NLRB’s attorney argued that the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) gives employees the right to engage in concerted activity for their mutual aid and protection and that the homebuilder’s broadly worded arbitration policy interfered with the opportunity of employees to obtain class or collective litigation of their employment-related claims in addition to their right to assert claims in a concerted manner. The homebuilder’s attorney argued that never before has the NLRB found that the NLRA gives employees the right to engage in class or collective litigation and that the NLRA contains “no clear congressional mandate” making the dispute resolution procedure used by the homebuilder illegal. According to the homebuilder’s attorney, vague references to concerted activity in NLRB decisions does not demonstrate a clear congressional mandate under the NLRA that would justify the court in denying the enforcement of an otherwise lawful arbitration agreement. A decision is awaited.

The Fifth Circuit’s rulings could have a significant impact on how builders and employers in general draft their dispute resolution provisions.

This article is authored by attorney Shannon O. Young and is intended for educational purposes and to give you general information and a general understanding of the law only, not to provide specific legal advice. Any particular questions should be directed to your legal counsel or, if you do not have one, please feel free to contact us.